


All Across Time

by Aybara



Category: Marvel (Comics), Spider-Man (Comicverse), Spider-Man (Ultimateverse), Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Action, F/M, Fluff, Meta, Multiverse, Rewrite, Romance, Spoilers for everything, True Love, canon compliant deaths, dark future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:27:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29503398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aybara/pseuds/Aybara
Summary: Peter Parker has seen it all, literally.He has lived a million different lives, but they all end the same way - the Final Battle. It comes at different times for different universes, but one lonesome iteration faces the deadly conflict alone. The end of his universe approaches, and a last gambit arises in the form of a leap across the multiverse - Peter is forced to relive his life as a phantom thread, uniting his many alternate self’s against evil. His only issue, the temptation to change everything. Love soon becomes the question on his mind, and with a countdown to the death and rebirth of everyone he’s ever known, Peter has to make the choice between stagnation and the greater good.
Relationships: Peter Parker/Gwen Stacy, Peter Parker/Mary Jane Watson
Kudos: 4





	All Across Time

The Final Battle - it was approaching.  
For years, it had stood over them like an ominous hand, casting shadows across the world, reminding the significant that great hurt was coming; there were some that knew.  
They were the heroes: The Avengers, their subsidiaries, the Mutants, the Eternals, the Inhuman’s, and Spider-Man.  
He seemed unnecessary in the grand scheme - there they were gathered, in the sterile halls of the sky-breaching tower, a pantheon of warriors that had seen, and stopped, doomsday so many times the word had lost meaning. But Spider-Man, he had seen everything: he was once the young one, the kid with bright ideas and potential, but the kid all the same. Now he ranked among the seniors of the assembly, forty-three years old. He knew he wasn’t old, not by real standards, but among a team so temperamental they broke up and reformed every few years, his stolid presence became legend.  
Others still remained from his generation: when The Fantastic Four were at their apex, commercial heroes that sought law and order. When new heroes popped up everyday, each with their own specific villains, dividing New York City, America, the whole of the world, with their battles. When Peter was only fifteen. Presently, he could see some familiar faces, all acknowledging their peers with grunts and nods: Wolverine was the oldest, still armoured in yellow and black, though the costume had more infrastructure than before. He could not die, but time was withering, and chipped away even at his stone slab. Iron Man, for all of his vices, lived on in protocols and faceless armour. He gave no nods, though. None of the jokes they remembered Tony Stark for, either.  
But eyes seemed focused on him.  
Spider-Man.  
His costume had changed too: his bones creaked and his heart thrummed like a jackhammer in battle. Braces now scaffolded his spine, and some padding on the ribs didn’t go unappreciated. The suit had more cosmetic modifications, though: some choice advice from a tailor for the costumed had given him the details. It was now a jacket, with a reversible hood, bisected by seams and borders that made taking it on and off a lot easier. It was just more practical, more than the spandex one-piece that had coloured his first few years.  
Peter smiled - the first few years had been peculiar. Villains were as numerous as the heroes, and he seemed to attract a certain sect of lunatics. Vultures, octopi, lizards, goblins? They were a pervasive bunch, most of the older ones in the grave by now. Norman was wasting away in some prison, a skeleton man, and Electro has fizzled out some time ago. Then again, there had been five young ones vying to close up the wound in the crime world - one had prevailed, a girl that seemed his mirror image, just as brash. The only difference was she was infantile on the battlefield, and he could exploit all the tricks he had learned twenty-five years ago. Short-circuiting; electric-proofing; dousing with water; all of them, but still she came back. That was the criteria for villains these days. Enough persistence, but nothing large-scale. They seemed terrified to be deemed national threats, not since the Goblins a few decades ago. That had sparked a more authoritarian response to the costumed, more regulations, more harsh punishments, a higher standard.  
From those ashes, the new generation had arose. Many were descendants, inheriting the titles of their forefathers and mothers: Hawkeye’s daughter now wore the mantle, a girl had taken the name Iron-heart, and he vaguely remembered a kid called Miles taking over the Spider-Man title in another universe. He had liked Miles. But all of them were more disciplined, unwavering and steadfast. And here they were, gathered for the Final Battle.  
For anything called the Final Battle, Peter knew he shouldn’t have come. He had decided on the swing over - this was it for him. Spider-Man No More, after this last fight. His wife was expecting a child, and for the first time after an infinite number of breakups and restarts and promises and tears, they were in a good spot running on ten years. The love had never wilted or dwindled, and he knew those longing eyes from her were every bit as passionate as the day she knocked on his door and became his jackpot.  
So, he smoothed back his hair, feeling the single grey blade in the brown mane, more a symptom of stress than age, and peeled his mask down his face in one reluctant stroke. His collar was erect, and the heroes around him steeled. The Final Battle was to be fought on a faraway planet, a wasteland where destruction could be relegated. He remembered just a few months prior, when the final preparations had risen to a frenzy, assembling with the final threads of the Old Guard - Doctor Strange, Daredevil, The Hulk, and Thor - to divert the Battle from taking place on Earth. It would’ve been a cataclysm to dwarf all the others. He still felt guilty about leaving a planet obliterated in the face of the fight, but better on a planet with no life than one that swelled with it. One of the new guys stepped forward, one that introduced himself as a disciple of the God of Thunder. Thor stood behind him, just watching, with weary eyes in caverns of wrinkles. The boy raised a blade, a sword that crackled with howling energy, and proclaimed something about the ‘Byfrost!’. Light diffused from the boy, each and every caught in it, and suddenly they were throttling through Space in a tunnel of colours. Spider-Man looked around, scrabbling for control, over his body, over anything, though it proved challenging when all lords of gravity oppressed him, crushed him, compressed him to a cube of agony. He looked down, feeling his stomach invert, and watched Earth sparkle away in a glimmer of green and blue. His wife was down there, and soon his daughter too.  
Through the mask, his eyes clenched with determination - this was his Final Battle.

*

The Final Battle had screamed on for months. The foreign planet had been shaped by the chaos, the faceless evil that prevailed in every crevice - it had no ruler, no mad Titan or shapeshifter or cosmic threat, no name to the destruction. It was just a wave, a wave of hate that infected everyone they fought. It married the Guardians of The Galaxy, Kree, Skrull, sorcerers, fallen, every spell-caster and abomination in a legion of the malevolent.  
Spider-Man had been wary as he fought: it was on alien planets like this that he encountered the next great fight. The Symbiote had come from a place like this.  
The memory made him shudder, violent convulsions as he leaped and dodged. The evil had consumed Iron Man’s soulless armour, pirated what was not there, defiled the last semblance of Tony Stark. They had been fighting since the Pink Daybreak, and Peter knew they’d fight for many more to come. The Sun laid golden ribbons across them as they danced, and his legs could only kick so much until they became tied up in knots and bruises. He clunked to the floor in a heap, tearing the mask off and coughing out bile. On this cosmic scale, secret identities had no place. He just had to breathe, and think of good things.  
Memories were his only consolation amongst the vastness of the planet, and all the war - he thought of Mary-Jane almost constantly? her shimmering hair, her goofy smile, her electric eyes and her soft warmth. It rattled him to think of her, alone on the rainy nights when shadows chased the night. Even though he knew they had worked past that, that she was strong and verdant and wouldn’t crumble in the face of a few months, the image lingered, and he felt a choked sob.  
No more memories, he told himself.  
The Iron Creature bore down on him.  
This would not be the end.  
He had been fighting for so long, but he didn’t need rest - when the Final Battle was over, he would rest, and he would sleep for weeks in the plush arms of the woman he loved. But until then, he thought, baring red-painted teeth and clenching his fists, he would keep fighting the good fight.  
He leaped aside in the face of the Iron Creature, watching the evil etched a ganged grin into the metal. The evil twisted, corrupted and revealed. It had rent talons from stubby tin fingers, claws that cut the air ruthlessly. He had little trouble with them - already this suit had been scratched by cat claws so many times, he knew he procedure. Just leap away, and protect the logo. They always went for the Spider Logo.  
It moved with full autonomy, and siren light blazed from its every orifice. It’s chest scintillated with golden flame, and a pillar of destruction landed at him, levelling the planet angrily. He danced away, coughing out chuckles at the scrappiness of it all - courting death, he was, just like always. What did this beast have that the Green Goblin, that Venom and Carnage, that Morlun and the Juggernaut didn’t? This creature would not be his end. Not when he still had webs to spare.  
And he did, slinging his body around ruined hideouts on a tensing cord of fluid, grunting as his muscles wailed with stress. He let go, and sailed the winds briefly, in free flight. But the ground careened towards him, and the Iron Creature leered from behind. He could only-  
“Vanquish!” A rallying cry floated towards him.  
He turned, feeling his body twist in the zephyr, eyes widening to insect circles as he saw it: Doctor Strange, swirling his hands with a technicolour army, needles of incandescent light firing from the man like bullets. They ensnared the Iron Creature, eroding away the metal with Strange’s mechanical glare fixed on it, and then on Spider-Man. He gravitated downwards, not even paying the beast a sullen look as it evaporated into death. He just spoke,  
“Parker! I need your help.”  
“My help?” Peter managed weakly. Unmasked, he could not hide his hurt, blood speckling his beard and wrinkles deep carved on his forehead. “You just bought my help with that. I don’t know what I can do for you, though.” He chuckled, weak again.  
“Kid, you have always been the linchpin.” Strange spoke, his voice flat, “Have you forgotten how many times you’ve been the last resort?.”  
“How could I forget?” Peter murmured. He could feel a joke in the back of his head, but suppressed the urge. Doctor Strange has grown hard in his geriatric years. Eighty, and still serving the good fight. He now looked a mummy, his red cloak a sarcophagus, and his blue uniform a few rags dressing the coffin. He concurred,  
“It was when you were toying with the totems. Anyway, we need to do that, but on a much bigger scale.”  
Peter paled.  
“Not again. Please not again.” He managed, his voice splintering in teenage breaks, “I can’t do that again, Doc. There has to be another way. I can’t.. relive my life again, not after what’s happened since the first time.”  
“Not your life, kid.” Strange continued. His tone was dire, with all the macabre resignation of a man that knew death was fast approaching. Not for him, but for reality itself. “I’m going to do that, on a universal scale. Across all the known realities, gathering the Spiders for our Last Battle.”  
“So I’m just getting the band back together?” Peter grumbled, “That’s... that’s okay. I can do that.”  
“Not so simple. The technology is not in our favour: I do not have the means to insert you into another universe at will. The power is just...” he clutched his side longingly, “Not there. I’m going to have to put you in the body of the Peter Parker from that universe, and you’ll have to pilot him to make the right decisions, become the hero that we need to intervene. And to rally his universe’s heroes against the Dark Forces.”  
“I don’t understand, Doc.”  
“You have to hijack an alternate Peter Parker, and become the binding thread to unites the Avengers with the mutants. War tore us apart here, kid. In fighting, that’s left our troops halved. In the Final Battle, and we fight half-cocked. Can you do it?”  
“Why me, Doc? Why me?”  
“You’ve established prior contact with alternate universes. When Morlun got his family after you? That acclimatised you to this. Better to have someone well-versed in these matters than a novice.”  
“What does it.. entail?”  
“What did I just say, kid? You know your mission-,”  
“How long? That’s all I need to know. How long will I be in this Peter Parker’s body?”  
“As long as it takes.”  
Peter breathed in. His breath rattled violently in his throat,  
“As long as it takes.” He echoed finally.  
Doctor Strange nodded pensively, and began the incantation. The world swirled around Peter Parker, unravelling into blackness, and he watched as the Final Battle was replaced by a bedroom.


End file.
